Is Sony Edging Ahead of Microsoft in Next-Gen Console War?

It's early days yet, and although many are expecting the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to duke it out in a protracted, multi-year conflict, Sony appears to have the edge out of the gate, thanks in part to its one-week sales lead and a lower selling price. The firm announced that it has sold more than 2.1 million PlayStation 4 consoles in its first two weeks or so of availability.

Microsoft, meanwhile, noted that Xbox One users have killed more than 3 billion virtual zombies in a game called Dead Rising 3.

One can only take that latter figure—which was provided in the wake of the Sony PlayStation 4 sales announcement and was accompanied by other game-related statistics—to mean that Microsoft has not sold 2.1 million Xbox One consoles yet. But remember, the PlayStation 4 launched a week earlier than the Xbox One and is now sold in over twice as many countries. And the PlayStation 4 costs $400, compared with $500 for the Xbox One.

Sony kicked off the latest sales analysis earlier this week when it announced a steady uptick in PlayStation 4 sales as the console was launched, over time, in more and more markets. Since its November 15 launch in North America, console availability has expanded to 32 countries.

"Demand remains incredibly strong and continues to overwhelm the supply worldwide," Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House said in a prepared statement. "We are diligently working to meet those growing demands and to deliver additional PlayStation 4 units."

Not willing to be outdone by Sony, but not able to claim similar sales, Microsoft instead offered a more vague declaration of success.

"Eleven days in, we are seeing record-breaking sales and are selling every Xbox One we can make," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in his own prepared statement. "Demand is far exceeding supply in the 13 countries we've launched, and we are sold out at retailers around the world."

To be fair to Microsoft, the Xbox One has been available for a week less than the PlayStation 4 and is available in far fewer markets, 13 versus 32 for the PlayStation 4.

Still, it's hard to understand why Microsoft would so feebly counter Sony's hard number with game statistics. In addition to those zombies, Microsoft claims that gamers have driven more than 90 million virtual miles Forza Motorsport 5, have defeated more than 186 million virtual enemies in Ryse: Son of Rome, and have controlled more than 150 million combos in Killer Instinct, a fighting title.

"We are delivering consoles to retailers as fast as possible this holiday season," Mehdi's statement continues. "As more and more people are looking to join the fun, it has become increasingly more challenging to find Xbox One in stores."

Sony publicly predicted that it would be able to sell more than 3 million PlayStation 4s by the end of 2013 and 5 million by March. This week's figure suggests that the firm is on track to meet those milestones. It sold 250,000 PlayStation 4s in the United Kingdom alone in just 2 days. By comparison, the PlayStation 3, launched in 2006, sold just under 200,000 units in its first month of availability in North America.

Xbox One's two-week milestone comes Friday, and any sales announcement—or lack thereof—will of course be closely scrutinized. But Microsoft does have one mini-victory to claim in the interim: The Xbox One easily outsold the PlayStation 4 during the crucial "Black Friday" shopping apocalypse, taking 31 percent of total video game sales, compared with just 15 percent for the PlayStation 4.

Discuss this Article 30

While not a definitive measure and only for a single game http://bf4stats.com/ does present a statistical indicator of how many people are playing an individual AAA title at a particular point in time. If those figures are extrapolated PS4 might have a 2 to 1 advantage...

"Still, it's hard to understand why Microsoft would so feebly counter Sony's hard number with game statistics."

Not so hard to understand. Yusuf Mehdi is terrible at his job. He remains in his position only by virtue of the extreme intertia plaguing MS's senior management. He'd be an easy target for a new CEO who saw the need to do some house cleaning.

u are the dumbest person on earth to say that yusuf mehdi is terrible.
Just look at all the great ideas like voice , tv , snap that have been put into xbone. All media hype aside ps4 just just cant compete to xbone in terms of functionality and innovation.
As for console design i do agree it should have been smaller and priced at $449.

I'll be nice to @msfan, but not to Mr. Mehdi. Yusuf Mehdi had nothing to do with the development of the Xbox One. He is an MS marketing executive, and he is frankly terrible at his job and needs to go.

I'm happy I've grown beyond the whole "console war" thing. It's interesting to see how they compare, but I honestly don't care who ends up on top. I bought the console that excited me the most and had the games I wanted to play the most and so far I am not disappointed.

The US is by far the xBone's strongest market because of the set-top-box related functionality of the xBone that isn't yet applicable to much/most of the world outside the US. It's also interesting to note that the PS4 launched in the EU about a week *later* than the xBone launched in the EU. So PS4 was first to launch in the US; second to launch in the EU, apparently.

My opinion is that the PS4 will do much better than the xBone outside of the US because of the US-specific nature of the TV hardware in the xBone.

What would have been great: Microsoft launches two separate component products...

1) US-configured set-top-box for $100

2) A $400 pure gaming console *at least* as powerful as the PS4, with voice command and a Kinect (both optional in one kit) for an additional $100.

The units would individually be much smaller than the xBone, and designed to stack--like other kinds of living-room peripherals have traditionally done. This would have been a no-compromise approach allowing consumers to purchase the functionality they want as opposed to an entire package, some of which consumers may not care for, or would prefer to add later, if at all.

Although sales are a huge factor in this-gen war, I would remind every one about the Wii; Nintendo sold a huge amount of consoles, but it was the Xbox360 the one bringing real innovation to the table: best multiplayer, profiles/avatars, achievements, online-store transactions and scalable console-interface infrastructure.

Sales are important, yes, and PS4 is outselling the Xbox One, but at the end of the day, innovation thriumps season-trendiness.

Paul if this is true it could just be a temporary thing. Some people are still upset with the "always on" thing that Microsoft now said the Xbox One doesn't always have to be on and other things that were said when the Xbox One was first talked about.

Also people are seeing the PS4 is $100 cheaper so they're buying it because of that.

The thing I think will happen is the Wii effect. People who had the Xbox 360 who bought the PS4 will miss their favorite games as they come out on the Xbox One and they'll buy it then their PS4 will just sit there because they'll be playing Titenfall, and Halo 5, and other games they really love that the PS4 doesn't have. At that point the Xbox will pass the PS4 in sales and not only that will be used more than the PS4 and more people will buy into Xbox Live than PSN because people will also see that PSN is far inferior.

This notion that the 360 is "third/last" is a bit flawed. It's actually in a virtual tie with the PS4. So while it may be technically last, it's not like it's a big gap. Both the 360 and the PS4 were handily outsold by the Wii. But the 360 and PS4 are basically tied.

I think for the die hard "gamer", the PS4 is a much more attractive option than the PS3 was. But, in the 12-30 age group where the Xbox dominated, I think it's a hard sell to get that crowd off of Xbox live, which is a far better experience than the PlayStation network. They are going to go where their friends are. I think in the long run, Xbox One will sell more units over it's lifespan. I bought one, but I also want a PS4 once the price comes down. The competition is great for the consumer.

i dont understand why people are calling ps4 as a device for " die hard gamers" and " hard core gamers" when xbox one has quiet similar capabilities and the subtle differences in game play like frame rate cant even be detected by a human eye.

The "die-hard gamers" tag comes from the non-subtle, obvious differences that *are* detected by the human eye...;) Like resolution and other kinds of special effects, for instance. Frame-rate is only one way of measuring the difference--it's not the *only way* by any means.

(The real "die-hard-gamers" of course won't be running either console because nothing beats a Windows PC for gaming. It's got more of everything the consoles have and can do more of everything the consoles can do, and can do a lot more that neither console can do at all.)

Isn't it just a matter of who can manufacture the most consoles? None of these consoles are being left in stores. I don't see this temporary manufacturing race to have much to do with which console more people are going to buy in the long run.

I would say even 2-1 for PS4 is good for X1. The world is so amazingly anti-MS now, that any sales are +. It is not enough for MS to be as good as others or even a bit better. It needs to be a clear winner to get any mind share in todays anti-MS world. And I would like to see them starting to do it because its the only way and because they have resources to succeed.

I think MS might be missing a pretty cool idea that they have built into xBox One that gets little or no press, from what I have see. It is that workout fitness program. I have no use for it but it is the only thing that my wife has found useful and fun on the xBox. It really is kind of cool to see your kinect "picture" on screen an points accumulate as you master the exercises. I could imagine a ballet training app as the kinect seems to be plenty accurate enough for that and lots of other things. Just a thought. I am kind of disappointed with the skydrive app. And I do not understand that darn remote control for TV. Why not simply have a normal second screen remote for everything?

Microsoft has a bigger uphill climb than they did last generation. They didn't get out a year ahead, they are suffering from the reverberating effects of their poor E3 showing, and they are the more expensive console this time around.

Xbox also doesn't sell well in Japan, they are merely adequate in Europe. This is an American gaming console through and through. That will hurt them. PS3 actually ended the generation with a slight edge in sales, and that was after an abysmal start (Because of Japan and Europe). Sony now has the jump, the better messaging and the broader international support. I think Microsoft has a real fight on their hands.

I question how much pull an all in one box now has. Streaming services are generally built in to new TVs, and are also available on tablets and Roku type devices. Plus the PS4 has the big hitters on the streaming front too. They're everywhere now.

HDMI pass through and IR blasting is never going to be mainstream, and only works in America anyway.

So that leaves gaming, which the PS4 is better at due to it's superior GPU and RAM. Of course Titanfall will be a big draw next year, but Sony have plenty of their own exclusives too.

Then there's the price issue, which MS desperately need to solve soon, or they really will get beaten comprehensively by Sony.

I think what we can see so far is that the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One, that may just be an availability/production issue.

However, I do think there is more to it the Xbox One is not as graphically powerful as the PS4, that has been demonstrated by BF4, CoD Ghosts and now even Assassin's Creed 4 which launched at the same resolution on both consoles but subsequently the PS4 version got a native 1080p upgrade with no word of a similar upgrade for the Xbox One.

Now of course we can say that there is very little visual difference between 720p and 1080p when sitting 10ft from a TV screen and there is some merit to that. But it is a little bit like saying that a iPhone 5S 8MP camera is just as good as a Nokia 1020 41MP camera :) In your heart you know which is better!

Another aspect to it is Playstation users have no reason to hesitate in upgrading, they liked the PS3 and the PS4 has demonstrated that it is graphically more powerful so off they go to the shops.

Xbox owners have doubts, Microsoft clearly have not delivered a console that equals or bests the PS4 graphically so they have to decide what it is they want, and one outcome is that don't buy anything and wait and see or hesitate over their purchase.

That is exactly what has happened to me, in the summer I was all for the Xbox for I actually wanted diskless gaming, family sharing, Kinect and DRM, and was getting one straight away.

But the launch of cross platform games at lower resolution and frame rate has caused me to stop and think. This is primarily a game console I am buying I will buy only one everything else is secondary.

Microsoft should have ensured they had 1080p nextgen capabilities in the bag before they started with all the media addons. Gamers by consoles for gaming and use them for secondary purposes everyone else buys a Roku.

The Xbox One has to primarily be a games console and it should have been the equal to its competition, and there where no surprises everyone knew 1080p was the goal and Microsoft had development hardware with the game developers for months (years) they even own a developer they must have known they weren't hitting the mark.

Like all consoles now its out they can't change the hardware and they have the 2nd most powerful console on the market and that fact will cost them sales.

Hello BuellPilotX1
Very well said. Microsoft has managed to blur the limits instead of proposing clear choices for user. A game console is a game console, and is mostly an individual device, as gaming is a specific activity (mostly done by young men and male teenagers) which is often not very well accepted by the rest of the family (especially mothers and wives).
So all the living room features that Microsoft has added to the XBOX will stay unused or hidden in most of the cases, as most of the games are played appart, in a sleeping room or a isolated room, surely not in the middle of the kitchen.
This is why Sony will always win this kind of "war".
This wrong positionning of the XBOX product has to be seen in perspective with the problem Microsoft encounters with the operating systems: they do not propose a clear choice, but have blured the borders between touch, non-touch and phone devices in such a way that even tech-savvy and enthusist users are lost.
The gaming feature of the XBOX is as good as the Desktop OS in Windows 8, I mean excellent, and deserves success. So why hide it under experimental features that does not work so well?
A last point: as a french consumer, I do not have access to most of the TV features like Netflix, etc. So for me the choice is quick between a thin and powerfull specialized device and an enormous and half useless device.
Best regards,
David